Making Gypsies, Roma and Travellers visible in the curriculum

Richard Kerridge, History Subject Adviser at the Examining Board OCR, asked the ACERT Education Network to join him in pressing for a more representative curriculum when he spoke to our meeting on 26th April. In many areas, Gypsies, Roma and Travellers are often the largest minority group but they will not find themselves reflected in the curriculum.

Previously, Richard was a History teacher in Mildenhall and Ipswich, and as a fellow of the History Association (to which most History teachers belong) he developed a range of resources for teaching the history of Gypsy, Roma and Traveller people with Helen Snelson,  PGCE History Curriculum Leader at the University of York and the historian Professor Becky Taylor.

Detailed lesson plans and adaptable teaching materials are freely available on the York CLIO website. There is a four lesson sequence that focuses on the history of Gypsies and Travellers from the start of the first industrial revolution period to the eve of the First World War. This is an appropriate focus for the KS3 curriculum There is also an explanatory article on the importance of including Gypsy, Roma and Traveller perspectives across the curriculum. There are also has a comprehensive collection of links to useful resources and podcast tasters.

Richard is keen to meet with ACERT members who are interested in developing and sharing materials across the curriculum.

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Romani Archaeology Project

John Henry Philips, a guest speaker at the Education Network Meeting on 26th April, is an archaeologist, author and film-maker, of Romani heritage.

John Henry Philips

While living in Canada, he witnessed the treatment of minorities in Canada, where he was living, and saw parallels with the treatment of nomadic communities in the UK; their history is overlooked and their communities are underrepresented among professional researchers.

He attended the Romani Film Festival in Berlin, and recognised the importance of seeing people like yourself in creative and leading roles. He had previously volunteered on archaeology projects with veterans, and noticed the mental health benefits and pathways into Higher Education offered to participants.

In 2022, John Henry formed Romani Community Archaeology  with Stuart Eve, currently Director of Creativity at the Museum of London Archaeology. RCA is a not-for-profit organisation to engage with the complex history and deep culture of Romani in Britain by undertaking a series of archaeological projects, each one in close collaboration with modern Romani people.

Imari china is a style traditionally collected by Romani communities found at Thorney Hill

The current project focuses on Thorney Hill between Burley and Bransgore on the edge of the New Forest. In 1926, when Gypsies and Travellers were no longer allowed to camp out on the open forest, Thorney Hill was the largest of the seven compounds created with up to four hundred inhabitants at a time.

Numbers living there gradually fell over the years and in 1960, 22 second hand pre-fabricated homes, were provided for the remaining families. Eventually, all of the families were either moved into permanent houses in Thorney Hill or nearby Ibsley but the footprints of the prefabs were visible from satellite imagery in the dry summer of 2018.

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A large number of artefacts representing Romani use of the area are visible when walking across Thorney Hill Holms.

Horse liniment found visible on the surface at Thorney Hill

With initial investigation at Thorney Hill proving positive, RCA will return to the site at various stages during 2023. Working alongside the local Romani community, they will undertake fieldwalking, geophysics, and excavation within the site of the former compound. These phases will be documented through artwork, film, and a museum exhibit at the New Forest Heritage Centre.

Prior to co-founding R.C.A, he spent a number of years working in commercial archaeology and freelancing as a conflict archaeologist, before searching for a Second World War shipwreck. John Henry subsequently produced a documentary No Roses On A Sailor’s Grave and wrote a book, The Search, on the topic.

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National Survey provides evidence of racism, disadvantage and ill health

Here are some of the key findings relating to Gypsy, Roma and Traveller communities from the Evaluating Equality National Survey (EVENS).

  • Over half the respondents from the Gypsy/Traveller ethnic groups , reported having experienced a physical racist assault
  • More than a third of the Roma and the Gypsy/Traveller ethnic groups reported racial discrimination from the police
  • Close to half of the Gypsy/Traveller ethnic groups reported having experienced racial discrimination in public places
  • Roma and the Gypsy/Traveller ethnic groups, had the highest rates of reporting increased police activity within their community and the highest rates of reporting being stopped by the police during the period of the COVID-19 pandemic
  • On average, ethnic minority groups fare well in comparison to the White British group in relation to educational attainment (although this is markedly not the case for the Mixed White and Black Caribbean, Gypsy/Traveller and Roma ethnic groups).
  • Gypsy/Traveller and Roma men had a higher risk than White British men of being in precarious employment (that is, with temporary and zero-hours contracts, or solo self-employed)
  • Gypsy/Traveller, Mixed White and Black Caribbean and White Eastern European people are much more likely to be in semi-routine and routine occupations
  • Given its coverage of the experiences of Gypsy Traveller and Roma people, EVENS has also been able to uniquely document that the majority of Gypsy/Traveller people (almost three in five) and just over a quarter of Roma people lived in caravans and mobile homes.
  • Gypsy/Traveller and Roma ethnic groups were less likely to experience loneliness during the pandemic than the White British group.
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Community researchers provide powerful evidence of discrimination

The largest number of Roma, Gypsy and Traveller participants in any national survey to date were reached by six Roma and Traveller researchers being employed and trained in research techniques to go out and record responses from community members.

The figures were recorded as part of the Evidence for Equality National Survey (Evens) of ethnic and religious minorities.

Prof Nissa Finney, who led the project, said: “Evens allows us to compare the pandemic experiences of Roma and Traveller people to other ethnic groups, which hasn’t been possible before now. The disadvantage that we’ve found with the data is striking.

“Rigorous, robust, reliable data like that in Evens is essential for designing appropriate and effective policies and interventions. There’s still work to do to improve data and data collection – marginalised communities can be mistrustful of research and of its ability to bring change.

“A clear message from our study is the need for political commitment to better monitoring and measurement of the full range of ethnic groups. This is how we’ll make visible in evidence and policy those people who have been invisible.”

The study was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council and undertaken by the Centre on the Dynamics of Ethnicity, in collaboration with community groups and charities.

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